The rain had stopped when they opened the mine doors again after breakfast the next day, replaced by the punishing summer heat. It was all made worse by the sudden humidity in the air, which somehow combined to distill the worst parts of being wet and being hot.

Lori wanted to just stay in the mine with a binding of waterwisps in front of the entrance to keep out the moisture in the air, but unfortunately there was work to be done. While it wasn't as bad as the puddles of water caught in rocks and the many new craters, the river water had the bitter taste of caustic fluid. She didn't know how long that would last, so for the foreseeable future River's Fork would need to distill its water before drinking.

While everyone went out to assess the damage, start clearing out the debris—she told Yllian to put all the stone debris together into piles in case she needed building material—Lori began working on something to purify the water. The barrels they'd left out in the rain, as well as what remained in the mine, would be able to provide them with drinking water, but those would be expended soon.

The work was an exercise in suffering, since she had to do it under the bare sun next to the river. The humidity and heat were strong, and even with a binding of waterwisps, airwisps and firewisps anchored to her warm skin to try to keep her comfortable, it wasn't. Oh, the waterwisps were mostly able to keep the humidity off her, but she couldn't put them in certain places like her face because of the moisture in her eyes, so her face was feeling a little humid. And while the airwisps gave her a nice private breeze over her skin, even under her shirt and trousers, that didn't change the fact the sun was hot. Even a binding of firewisp to keep the heat from the sun from reaching her wasn't very helpful when everything around her was hot.

Still, the bindings around her made the terrible heat manageable, and her hat kept the sunlight off her eyes as she worked. She kept the device she was building simple, a pace-high stone pillar—well, pile of rocks fused together with the sides shaved down—that rose from the ground and connected to the bedrock by means of using earthwisps to solidify everything under it. On opposite sides of the stone pillar were stone spouts and at the top of the pillar was a bowl-like funnel to pour water into. She'd have made it shorter, but the barrels for the water needed to be able to fit under the water spout. One of the spouts was lower and closer to the ground, and would be where the substances dissolved into the water would come out.

Lori had several of the rock debris carried over to the stone pillar so she could fuse the material together into a stepping stone to stand on top of when pouring water into the funnel.

The binding she anchored to the internal piping leading from the funnel to the spouts was the same binding she had placed on the sink. She had been tempted to remove the firewisps since given the pillar's position the sun would be providing a lot of heat, but the thermal conductivity of the stone was uncertain, so she in the end she made no alterations. People poured water in, waterwisps turned it into vapor while directing it so that it would backflow up the funnel, anything that had been dissolved into the water would drop down. The dissolved debris would fall out the lower spout, the water would be directed out the higher spout were more waterwisp bindings would condense back into water.

Thankfully, pouring in a bucket of water into the funnel resulted in water that had only the bitterness of distilled water, and not the more intense bitterness of a more caustic solution. The white powder that came out of the other spout was caught in a little stone container that she shaped, because the wooden bucket that she'd originally been catching the powder with had started getting distressingly hot when a little water accidentally splashed into it.

Lori was in the middle of attaching a gutted wisplight to the pillar to try and make the water distillation pillar into a bound tool when she heard a sound. It was the sound of fast, rushing water moving so quickly it almost whistled. She looked up, turning her gaze upriver, and there she saw a small, fast-moving boat. It was moving faster than the current, and though she knew it would have oars, none of them were in use. Standing nearby, Riz started waving, and people on the boat waved back.

Oh good, her way home was finally back.

She turned away and went back to working on the distillation device. She just had to mount the gutted wisplight, perhaps add a binding of lightwisps to act as an indicator that it was imbued and active, and her responsibilities would be met. Then she could finally leave and go home.

––––––––––––––––––

Despite finishing the new water distillation bound tool, Lori didn't get to go back home right away.

As much as she glared at Rian, she supposed it was part of her lord's responsibilities to assess the damage to River's Fork's infrastructure. And if he was going to be assessing things, she might as well find out about it herself.

Ugh, she'd better get back home today!

"The damage to people's houses has been minimal," Yllian reported as the three of them walked through the rain-soaked ground under River Fork's dome. As usual, there were new holes in the dome of intertwined branches and leaves, and Lori could see a long branch that seemed to be hanging from a strip of bark and ready to fall as someone climbed up the dome with a saw hanging from their belt. "The worst is some window shutters being lost and a little water damage because water got inside. The roof of the dining hall was damaged by a falling branch though, and the dome sustained the usual damage. Fortunately, the trees are managing to hold, so the dome is still structurally sound. Some of us will probably spend the night in the mine, but I already have people moving things back to their homes. Though the ground outside the dome is covered in pockmarks from whatever it was the dragon was doing. The Great Binder mentioned exploding metal."

Rian nodded. "Caustic metal explodes with contact with water and vitriolic substances," he said. Lori should have been surprised, but wasn't. Her lord was knowledgeable about the strangest things. "The size of the explosions depend on what kind and how much, but from the looks of it, whatever exploding dragon scales were being dropped weren't enclosed, which probably limited the damage their blasts caused." He sighed. "Our poor crops, though. A number of them were damaged, and we can confirm that Shana's—"

"Binder Shanalorre's," Lori corrected, walking between the two of them.

"—Binder Shanalorre's healing meaning doesn't work on plants," Rian continued seamlessly at the correction, "so we couldn't just patch them up again. We tried, but it wouldn't work. Not really surprising, but since even she hadn't ever tried it before, I thought maybe there'd be a chance. The farmers are all working frantically, trying to bind stems together, graft stems to intact roots, or replant the tops of the crops to see if they take root, but it's not looking likely."

He turned to Lori, his face grim instead of set in its usual smile. "This is going to be a bigger problem as time goes on and we set up larger fields. We could potentially lose up to a quarter of the crops we had in our fields, though since we expanded our fields this spring, what we'd have left would still enough to sustain us. However, if it had been worse… well, we'd definitely feel it harder."

Lori glared at him. "You want to recruit more Deadspeakers when you go to Covehold than what we had discussed."

"If we had someone other than Shanalorre, we'd have avoided most of our food problems," Rian pointed out. "Come on. You know that if I recruited only one they'd end up very overworked. Them having one or two people to help them with work would go a long way towards giving them time to rest and keeping them satisfied."

"Three. Three more Deadspeakers," she said flatly.

"One or two," Rian corrected meekly. "It's not unreasonable. You've seen our fields. How long do you think it would take a single person to go over it, just putting damaged crops back together before they died? Without having the advantages of a Dungeon Binder?" Rian made a theatrical sweeping gesture, as if trying to encompass everything around them. "Think of what we could do now if we had one or two experienced Deadspeakers. Repairs to the dome and houses, healing the crops so we don't lose any food, and without running them ragged since two could work in alternating shifts."

She gave him a flat, unamused look.

"And moving on and changing the subject!" Rian said cheerfully. "How are your terrace and crops? The trees with the meanings on them? How many of them survived?"

"We were lucky there," Yllian said as the direction they were walking changed. "While the kindling trees were damaged, it wasn't anything they wouldn't grow back anyway, and the fruit trees lost a little off the top, and the fruits on them went unharvested while we were in the shelter, but they managed to make it through the dragon untouched again."

Rian blinked. "That's… very fortunate. So they're fine? All of them?"

"Yes, though it's still not a lot."

"Every little bit helps," Rian said, sounding distracted as he frowned at the crops outside of the dome. There were some bare patches at the edges were people had dug up some of the crops to bring them to the mine. Some people were already planting the crops back in place, and with the contrast the amount of crops they managed to bring into the mine were rather underwhelming. "Did anything burn down?"

Yllian shook his head. "No, though we found scorching in several places." That would be from relatively small amounts of caustic metal getting hot and igniting on contact with water rather than exploding. "Compared to previous dragons, this one seems to have caused relatively little damage that can't be fixed, unlike the ones that came before. There don't even seem to be any dragonborn abominations."

"Let's not get overconfident, but it does seem that way, doesn't it?" Rian said. "Still, the water's probably going to be tainted for a while so pass water through the bound tool her Bindership made before drink. I'll come by tomorrow with more beads for it." He glanced at her when he said this, and Lori nodded. Yllian already had the little sack of beads that she'd brought with her in case of emergencies. "Are there any injuries? Does Binder Shanalorre need to make a visit?"

"No, no one was injured. The worst that happened are a few stubbed feet and aching bottoms from slipping."

"Hmm… perhaps Binder Shanalorre should come, just to make sure. Those kinds of falling accidents sometimes results in injuries that go unnoticed. Besides, with the work to come, best to make sure that everyone is as fit as possible. Sometimes back aches don't just go away, after all. What do you say, your Bindership?"

"If she needs to heal anyone, she can do it from where she is now," Lori said. "No need to have her go anywhere."

"I suppose, but she's petitioned for permission for some of the children to visit their parents. You know how she accompanies them when that happens. If she's going to be coming here anyway, she might as well see to the healing too, right?"

Lori grunted. "I'll consider it."

Rian and Yllian both looked at each other, the two of them looking amused for some reason.